


Things Left Unsaid

by alecmagnuslwb



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, okay but maybe a little referred to past angst, they're in love love but oops they've never said the words, weirdly like basically just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alecmagnuslwb/pseuds/alecmagnuslwb
Summary: The first few times around they don’t even say it, I love you just never comes out of their mouths even if they always show it. Zatanna didn’t expect John to be the first one to say it that’s for sure.
Relationships: John Constantine/Zatanna Zatara
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Things Left Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> Flufftober prompt day 18, Things Left Unsaid.

“God, I love you,” John says after she blasts a hellhound that was seconds away from his throat back. He places a quick kiss on her forehead and rushes off back into the fray of things two bright orange balls of flames in his hands at the ready.

Zatanna freezes for just a moment because he’s never said that out loud to her before and neither has she to him. Technically she still hasn’t since he rushed off so quickly she didn’t have a chance to reply.

It’s weird if she really thinks about it. Weird that she’s never heard those words leave his lips. They’ve been together on and off for three years, known each other for a little over four, but somehow it’s just never been said.

They’ve always been more of a show don’t tell kind of couple, speaking with actions and loaded looks more often than with words. He’s shown her that he loves her hundreds of times even if he’s never said it.

Well one time he did try to say it she thinks, slurring out the words barely understandable with god knows how many bottles of alcohol in his system and his head halfway in a toilet bowl. She doesn’t count that though, because he doesn’t remember it and she would rather not.

He’s told her he loves her in the way he makes breakfast with no meat just for her in the mornings, how he always picks up if she needs him, in how he’s always quick to her defense and in how he never has asked for his black jean jacket back and just keeps letting her steal it without question.

He says it in the little things and in the big, he stresses it in the way he touches her light and fleeting just to remind her he’s there or heavy and worshipping with warm calloused hands when they fall into bed together. He says it with his eyes when she says something kind or cleans his wounds, grateful and in love.

I love you is in the curve of his sardonic smile, the tilt away of his head when he smokes and the brush of his lips against hers.

He says it without saying it, a vulnerability in his actions and in his eyes that she knows she’s lucky to get, that she may very well be the only person to ever get.

And dammit she tries her damndest to show it right back in every way she can, she never wants him to think she doesn’t feel the same, god knows he hate himself enough to believe it’s the opposite.

She knows why she never said it at first, she was worried saying it out loud would scare him away. That putting the words out there raw and whole would make it too real.

Eventually though it just became second nature not to say it. Showing it was easy and at some point she thinks she just forgot that they never got around to saying it.

The way he says it so casual, like it’s no big deal, an everyday occurrence and jumps back off into things surprises her. She always figured she’d be the first one to break, the first one to say it out loud and put her heart on the line like that.

He doesn’t surprise her often, she knows him too well to be surprised by his antics good or bad, but when he does damn is it always a stunner.

She unfreezes when the pounding steps of another hellhound start to near her, she turns blasting it just like she had the one that was getting too close to John and jumps right back in alongside him as another swarm of beasts make their way towards them.

It takes a while, but eventually they dispense of the mayhem, just the two of them side by side, an easy push and pull unit as they always are. Every creature that had escaped sent back where it came from and the portal firmly shut.

The wooded area they found themselves in was luckily devoid of any campers or pedestrians, but the once green area is looking a little worse for wear now that all is said and done. Zatanna crouches down placing her hand on the ground, magic with the green isn’t really her forte, but she’s known Swamp Thing long enough that she’s picked up a trick or two to easily combine his style with her own brand of magic.

She focuses on the green on the energy that he’s so attuned with and imagines what the area once looked like, the flowers still trying to bloom despite the edges of fall creeping in, the trees with their turning leaves, and the green grass.

“Erotser siht ecalp ot tahw ti saw,” she whispers digging her fingers down into the earth. She feels the grass grow up around her and when she opens her eyes the land restores itself to what it looked like when they first arrived, what it looked like before Felix Faust opened a gate to a hell dimension just for fun.

She wishes she could do this on a grander scale.

John lets out a groan and drops himself into the grass beside where she’s crouched spreading out his arms like a kid making a snow angel.

She resituates herself dropping down in the grass beside him resting her head back on his right bicep once he’s done moving them around. The sky above them is clear, they’re just far out enough from any city that she can see all the stars and the bright lit moon crystal clear.

She holds out a hand that he instantly grabs with his own his fingers a little singed at their tips. She sighs as he pulls her hand to his chest just above where his heart beats steady.

“I love you too, by the way,” she says tilting her head to smile at him briefly before turning back to the sky. 

“Yeah, I know,” he says tugging her a little closer and pulling the arm she’s laying on in so that his fingers can card through her long dark hair. “Sorry it took me so long to say it.”

She smiles eyes still trained on the sky.

“That’s okay,” she says, because it is. He’s been saying it for years even if he’s just now said it out loud.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [alecmagnuslwb](https://alecmagnuslwb.tumblr.com/)


End file.
